


the excelsior

by inverse



Series: an accumulation of inevitabilities [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, implied gross ojisan sex probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 14:52:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1554281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse/pseuds/inverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>midorima makes an accidental discovery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the excelsior

It was getting late and the event had come to an end. People were filing out of the ballroom steadily; couples in pairs, families in groups. “I’ll see you again soon,” Midorima said, putting on the coat that the bellboy had held out for him. It was winter and term was starting soon, but before that Akashi was going back to the Kyoto residence for two weeks. They were enrolled in different faculties, and were unlikely to go out of their way to meet each other, but a coffee date was definitely not out of the question. And besides, even if they didn’t arrange one, they would probably meet at another gathering, just like this one. A fundraiser, or a charity event of some sort.

“Yes,” replied Akashi. “Take care now, Shintarou. Until next time.” There were probably other guests he still had to talk to.

Midorima descended the curved staircase, which led to a large, sprawling foyer decorated with gold and glass, its floors a checkerboard constructed from squares of veined marble in black and white. The front doors were thrown wide open. People were coming in and going out and the air was cold and crisp. It was snowing mildly outside, specks of white against the stark blackness of the hotel’s glossy, transparent façade. Midorima looked back through the rows of glittering chandeliers on the floor above, and Akashi was now speaking to someone whom he did not recognise. Their backs were slanted against the balustrade and the man’s hand was resting on the small of Akashi’s back in a way that suggested a covert familiarity. Midorima continued staring as he made his way down. The conversation seemed to involve an unnatural degree of nicety, a jarring intimacy.

His family chauffeur was still on the way. There was a traffic jam in Shibuya, and it would take at least twenty minutes for the chauffeur to arrive. He stood now, leaning against a pillar, checking his e-mail on his phone. Every once in a while his eyes would flicker to the second-floor corridor, but Akashi and his companion were still there – Midorima watched as they continued talking, then milled away to the middle of the lobby; they separated, and then Akashi disappeared towards the lift lobby, hidden away in an alcove to the reception’s left, and the stranger approached one of the staff at the counter. The alarm bells went off in Midorima’s head. A million possibilities ran through his mind. They were going to talk business in a hotel room. They were talking business in a hotel room. They were talking – no. 

It was difficult to pay attention to his phone now. Then the receptionist slid an envelope over the counter with a courteous smile, and the stranger tucked it into the pocket in his suit, walking now towards the lift lobby, as swiftly as possible, scrunching his nose and giving it a quick tweak with his hand as if there was a sudden itch.

Midorima looked down towards his phone. _A friend has invited me to have supper_ , he typed. _You can go back. I will inform my father as well._ He sent it to his chauffeur, who would no doubt have no trouble reading it on the packed Shibuya highway. Then he made a similar call to his father, saying that he wouldn’t be back for the night. He ascended the stairs again, amidst a busy stream of guests who were roaming the area, one hand on the oak railing for ease of movement, and approached the very same receptionist. The welcoming smile on her plump, heart-shaped face flickered a little as he walked up to her, drawn to his full height, aware that the expression on his face must not be a very savoury one.

“The gentleman who was talking to you just now,” he began to describe, and her smile downright waned, “dark grey suit, cream scarf, glasses. Did he check into a room for tonight?”

“My deepest apologies, sir,” she said, trying to sound her diplomatic best, but there was a slight tremble to her voice. She was probably new. “We are not allowed to divulge any information regarding our guests.”

“Did you see that young man who was accompanying him or did you not? His father’s company has a significant interest in this chain of hotels, so god help you, if anything happens to him, his father’s voice will be heard, and you will be among the first to hear it.” He made it a point to glance at the name tag that she was wearing. It read, _Watanabe Aya, Front Office Manager_.

The receptionist chewed on her lip, looking down at the glowing screen of the control panel, then pressed some buttons and said, reluctantly, “I cannot reveal the exact details, but the gentleman did check into a room for tonight, yes.”

“A suite?”

“A – a double.”

“Cheap,” Midorima said to himself, knowing full well what the double rooms in this hotel cost. “I’ll take the adjacent room.”

Watanabe wavered for a moment.

He walked himself up to the eighteenth floor. Chopin was playing in the lift he entered, an entirely too technical and calculated rendition of one of his mid-career waltzes. He was still wearing the scarf and coat he’d donned earlier, and, standing under the amber glow of the ceiling lamps, he felt like he was thawing. The woollen insides of his coat fed his own bodily heat back to him, seeping through the layers of his suit and spreading through the pockets of air between each layer, like a very rudimentary thermal feedback system. When the doors of the lift opened he found himself walking towards the end of a lengthy, carpeted corridor. Swiping the key card at the designated room, he hoped that he was very wrong.

The room itself was functionally decorated – a rosy beige wallpaper, white comforter on top of white sheets, a modest wooden headboard, a nondescript modernist painting next to a moderately-sized television on top of an absolutely unremarkable wooden console. On the surface of another desk just a few feet away there was a neatly coiled bunch of wires, presumably for the internet; a small electric kettle, two cups, and a tray of complimentary beverages in their complimentary paper sachets; then an uncomfortable-looking swivel chair tucked into the empty space beneath it. A mirror sat opposite it, large and imposing, as if daring one to look inside it. Midorima removed his shoes and hung his coat and his jacket in the closet that was situated in the corridor between the door and the body of the room itself; his lucky item of the day, too, removed from where it had sat snugly in his breast pocket and placed on the desk. Then he made himself a cup of instant coffee, unpalatable even as he emptied the contents of a cheap-looking packet into a cup, and waited. It occurred to him, pouring hot, just-boiled water from the kettle, that Watanabe could have just given him any vacant room, and he would be none the wiser about it. He could not retrieve any details about Akashi’s associate as confirmation – that would likely attract some sort of liability if he had insisted – but it would just be a temporary inconvenience towards his uncovering the truth, which he would, given enough time.

His neighbours were quiet – initially. Then, through the tinkling of silverware against porcelain as he stirred his drink, the unmistakeable rumpling of sheets, of clothes, of fabric. Conversation. Midorima stilled. A deep, gruff tenor, and a younger, nonetheless nuanced, voice, and the words weren’t distinct, but there was a very suggestive, flirtatious tone to the banter, the intonations at once low and smooth and buttery.

The talking got louder. There was laughter, though not of the joyous variety – more of a sarcastic, salacious species. The foul smell of cigarette smoke floated through the air vents, even though Midorima was informed that the whole floor was a designated non-smoking floor. “Good, ah, that’s good,” then came Akashi’s voice, loud and brazen enough now to be heard and to be distinguished, muffled from behind inches of empty, hollow soundproofing. “Please,” he begged, a desperate quality to his voice that Midorima had never heard before, like he wanted to be touched, was eager to be touched, wanted something very fervently. For a hotel so renowned and so expensive to live in, its walls were paper thin. That it wasn’t one of the so-called exclusive rooms did not excuse the transgression. Reputation did not beget quality, evidently.

Cancers were ranked fifth that day, and Sagittarians, incredulously, third. Midorima’s lucky item for the day was a harmonica, and he’d bought one from the music equipment store two streets down from where he lived, just that morning. It was a Hohner. A harmonica had previously turned up on the Oha Asa rankings, a few years back, and it had been a Suzuki then, but that was now in a storeroom where he kept all his past lucky items, categorised by type. If you wanted the most out of your lucky item, it had to be brand new. It had to be clean and it had to be unscathed and it had to be untouched for that purpose. Now the harmonica lay on the desk in the room, removed from where it had previously been, in his breast pocket, and it occurred to Midorima that he did not know what exactly a harmonica sounded like.

In the past, when they were still schoolmates, of course, Akashi would always accept graciously if Midorima offered him a lucky item for when Sagittarians were not ranked very well, even though he never believed in superstition the way Midorima did. Nor did he insinuate that it was foolish for Midorima to do what he was always doing. His beliefs simply lay in another system altogether and he saw no need to impose it upon Midorima. “Shintarou,” sometimes he would say, “winners make their own luck.”

 

*

 

Midorima did not sleep a wink that night. He checked out at seven a.m, however. In the early morning, when the light was beginning to stream in through the thin, gauzy curtains, the sound of the shower being used next door crept past the walls and leaked into his room, like old water pooling slowly in the corner of an old house. He wondered who was using it. It made no sense to wait for his neighbours to vacate the premises that they occupied so that he might leave. Akashi’s acquaintance did not know Midorima and Midorima decided that he was going to have to confront Akashi about this sometime anyway, but the risk of meeting him in the corridor was minimal. And even if he did, he had nothing to be ashamed of. He would arrange to meet Akashi again, on the spot, matter-of-fact. He put on his jacket and coat and returned the harmonica to his breast pocket and left the porcelain cup where it was. There was nothing else that needed adjusting because he did not touch anything else, and now he knew more than he needed to know.

There was a different receptionist from the night before at the front desk. She accepted his credit card happily and swiped it happily and gave him the receipt happily. He did not bump into anyone he knew at the lobby. He joined the taxi queue at the steps leading up to the hotel and hailed one home, but not before stopping by a pottery store for a fine china cup, the lucky item of the day.

A few days later he called on Akashi in Kyoto. Over the phone the day before, Akashi sounded puzzled as to why Midorima would want to meet him again so soon, but was nonetheless welcoming. He asked if a guest room was needed, but Midorima declined.

Midorima arrived in Kyoto in the early afternoon, and from there it was a short ride to Akashi’s very private, very concealed, apparently very much gossiped-about residence. The cabbie raised his eyebrows at his request to be sent there, but said nothing much, except to laugh about how Midorima must have friends in high places, if he was visiting an acquaintance who lived in that area. “We are not that close,” said Midorima. He’d been there just once before, a few years ago. It was a grand thing, a curious mish-mash of traditional Japanese and European influences; Roman columns, glass chandeliers, fireplaces; tatami floors, shoji doors, mini pagodas in the yard; all wrapped up in the same package of washitsu and yoshitsu, each on their own separate floor.

It had snowed slightly and for a very short while just before he arrived, so the residence was covered in a thin, powdery sheet of white. A servant bowed deeply and welcomed him as he crunched his way up to the front doors. “The young master is awaiting you,” she said, taking his coat and ushering him upstairs. He handed her some gifts that his mother had insisted he brought on his trip.

In the centre of a large, modified Japanese room lined with glass sliding doors – with access to a corridor overlooking the view outside – sat Akashi, kneeling in front of an English chessboard. He was dressed in business formal, though the jacket was gone and the knot of the tie loosened, as if he had just returned from meeting somebody. The game seemed to be in the early stages of the middlegame. “Shintarou,” he nodded. “Care to play?”

“No, thank you,” replied Midorima, taking his seat opposite Akashi despite his refusal. “I am a little tired from travelling.”

Akashi gave him a modest smile. “It is just as well,” he remarked. “You are far too intelligent to mimic the moves of my imagined opponents. It would not be a very convincing simulation.”

Midorima hated when Akashi spoke to him like this. On the surface it would seem like he was doling out praise, but dig a little deeper and one would find that the compliment was a backhanded one – in this case, that Midorima could not handle the task of adjusting his mindset, regardless of whether it was a matter that stemmed from his pride or (lack of) intellect. No – he was not here today to discuss this. He ignored Akashi’s comment, reminding himself that he was no longer a teenager, and broached the subject as Akashi moved more pieces across the chessboard.

“That night after the dinner, when we last met,” he said. “You spent the night at the very same hotel, did you not?”

“Is this an interrogation?” Akashi responded, not looking up from his game. “But to answer your question – yes, I did indeed. So what of it?”

“With – a companion.”

“I can only guess what you are driving at, Shintarou, and there are several possibilities, but it would save us both some time if you got to the point instantly.”

Another thing that Akashi was very fond of doing. It was a way of saving time, but it was also a way of getting his adversary to lay their cards out on the table, forcing their hand, following which he would present them with an excessively quick, brutal, and, above all, unassailable rebuttal, rendering their methods moot, in the process dealing a heavy blow to their confidence for having had their best efforts shot down so easily. Midorima didn’t want to know if he did it on purpose or whether it was just something that he did out of pure instinct, and he didn’t want to think too deeply about what either option said about Akashi. It was not an issue worth caring about. What was left was to confront the issue head-on.

“I am speaking to you only because I am concerned, in my capacity as a friend,” he said in response. “It was a move uncharacteristic of you. I will not probe any further if I can have the reassurance that you were a willing participant.”

“You assume too much, Shintarou,” Akashi said, eyes darting up towards him now. “Firstly, how well do you know me that you know it was, as you said, uncharacteristic of me? Secondly, would it comfort you to know that I participated willingly? Thirdly, what, in the first place, did you think I participated in?”

Midorima was growing impatient now, but before he could get a word in edgewise, Akashi interrupted him. “Finally, I would like to know how you arrived at this conclusion of yours.”

“Would what I saw with my own eyes suffice as proof?” He omitted the part about what he had heard that night in his own room, through the walls. All of it was very shoddy evidence, anyway, circumstantial at best.

“You watched me? I like to think that I was very discreet.”

“Discreet? You were not at the reception with him when he bought that room. I can accept that. But you were with him when you met at the lift lobby and took the elevator and arrived at your room. If you really wanted to make sure that no one would find out, no one would have been able to find out. Is that not right?”

Akashi regarded Midorima with no uncertain degree of contempt, which stung. “Even my most eager detractors would not stoop to making puzzles out of my every move and attempting to solve them. How very meddlesome of you, Shintarou. Such behaviour does not become you.” Then his eyes softened, like a king pardoning a favourite wayward aide. “But you are right. It would not have been possible for anyone to find out if I wanted to make it so. I took a risk and it paid off.”

The lucky item for Sagittarius that day was an antique pocket watch. It was sitting snugly in one of the pockets in Midorima’s trousers, hands ticking away beneath its tarnished bronze face. He had remembered to prepare it, out of habit, and because he merely wanted to wish the best for a good friend. Akashi reached over the chessboard for his hand, some of the pieces knocked over, all of them forgotten now. He turned it over, swiped a thumb over the lines on Midorima’s palm, then placed it to his own face, his skin cold and smooth. Midorima did not know how to react to this turn of events – it was not even remotely close to any of the scenarios that he imagined might pan out – so he waited for Akashi to say something.

“He is a divorced man, Shintarou. An associate of an associate of my father’s. This was the first thing I asked him to do, when we first decided that we could be each other’s substitutes. I imagined this to have happened, with him in stead.” He laced his fingers through Midorima’s, still keeping it close to his face as he talked, with no sign of shying away. Through the glass doors one could see that it was snowing again outside, the evergreens nearby slowly dotted with frost. “I know you have my lucky item for the day with you. A pocket watch, is it not? I never believed in your superstitions the way you so fervently do, not even a single bit, but it is good enough that you do, and that’s what matters. That’s what makes your beliefs valid. Won’t you hand it over to me already?”

**Author's Note:**

> not sure if (a) akamido fic (b) parody of akamido fic (c) parody of wong kar wai movie starring tony leung as midorima and zhang ziyi as akashi
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> this actually kind of makes zero sense because it started out as a visual concept. it sure looked a lot better in my head. there's something in here about choice and determinism and systems of belief but i couldn't articulate it if i tried.


End file.
